Does Gardasil Prevent Cervical Cancer?

A while back, I borrowed a supercharged and Saleen modified Ford Lightning. It had 550 hot and bothered horses. I got a ticket and ran out of gas. Turns out that the 0-60 in 4.4 seconds capable truck had oversize tires making the speedometer read 70mph when I was actually going closer to 90. And it turns out that after I get my ticket, the modified gas tank still showed a quarter tank when it was empty.

Healthy and vibrant sexually active young women like a friend of mine in San Diego, got HPV from her boyfriend after he cheated on her once. She wasn’t aware of all the extenuating circumstances and conditions. Now, she can’t get pregnant. Her boyfriend broke up with her.

Young women who take Gardasil may not be aware of all the extenuating circumstances. Respectably, the Gardasil website does a good job of managing your expectations. It says verbatim, “GARDASIL may not fully protect everyone, and does not prevent all types of cervical cancer, so it’s important to continue routine cervical cancer screenings. GARDASIL does not treat cervical cancer or genital warts. GARDASIL will not protect against diseases caused by other HPV types or against diseases not caused by HPV.”

If you are like me, the part that could get you pulled over and walking with a leaky red plastic gas canisters is the same part of the Gardasil website. As soon as you hear the word, ‘may,’ the rest of the whole paragraph reads like “This drug may blah blah blah blah blah. Blah.”

I remember when the FDA first started clamping down on drug company claims by requiring that they disclose side effects. I thought, “Awww, poor company, nobody is going to want to take their medicine now.”

But over the decades, we’ve all become desensitized to the disclaimers that start with the word, “may.”

If you don’t stop at that hypnotic word, “may,” you’ll realize that Gardasil only protects against 4 total types of HPV. There over a hundred (100) (reference: National Cancer Institute). The same HPV gives people throat cancer because it also grows in the throat. You can pass on HPV from your throat to your saliva to the cervix through oral sex. Of the hundred plus HPV types, most of them do not hurt you. So destroying all HPV shouldn’t make you feel like you’ve accomplished a major health victory.

The sexually transmitted, high-risk HPVs types are 16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 59, 66, 68, and 73. Gardasil works against two (2) of them (source: http://gardasil.com). Granted Gardasil.com states that the two strains of HPV that they attack are responsible for “70% of cervical cancer cases.” However, what the website does not say is who make up these “cases.”

Are these “cases” of cervical cancer from people with similar sociographics and demographics as yourself? In other words, the two types of HPV that cause “70% of cervical cancer cases” are not the same thing as saying, “70% of all cervical cancer.” Do you see the difference? What if the cases of cervical cancer studied were all low-income white women in New Mexico. Would the same strain of HPV put wealthy black women in Beverly Hills at risk for cervical cancer and infertility? Do the two strains (of over 100) of HPV that Guardasil fights attack all women equally? Are the strains of HPV that attack your social and genetic background the same two that Gardasil attacks? The commercials seem to imply an answer by featuring White, Asian, and Black women.

I don’t know the answers to these questions.

But let’s say for the sake of arguement that the cases studied in the “70% of all cervical cancer cases” data were a fair and even dispersal of all women across geographic, income, and racial borders. Gardasil shows a high degree of social responsibility when it says, “GARDASIL is the only cervical cancer vaccine that helps protect against 4 types of human papillomavirus (HPV)” – source: gardasil.com

They never say they protect against Cervical Cancer.

Gardasil is wise for being modest because Cervical Cancer is also caused by:

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